[basil ransome-davies]

You're dead right about Paradise Lost, John. It was on the first-year syllabus at Sussex, so I read it. Not only that, I enjoyed it. But a big factor in understanding it and enjoying it was Empson's superb Milton's God, which treats it as an SF epic. I also admire Milton's principled support of regicide, which is why you won't find him with the respectables in Poets' Corner.